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The Chandra Variable Guide Star Catalog
Variable stars have been identified among the optical-wavelength lightcurves of guide stars used for pointing control of the Chandra X-rayObservatory. We present a catalog of these variable stars along withtheir light curves and ancillary data. Variability was detected to alower limit of 0.02 mag amplitude in the 4000-10000 Å range usingthe photometrically stable Aspect Camera on board the Chandraspacecraft. The Chandra Variable Guide Star Catalog (VGUIDE) contains827 stars, of which 586 are classified as definitely variable and 241are identified as possibly variable. Of the 586 definite variable stars,we believe 319 are new variable star identifications. Types of variablesin the catalog include eclipsing binaries, pulsating stars, and rotatingstars. The variability was detected during the course of normalverification of each Chandra pointing and results from analysis of over75,000 guide star light curves from the Chandra mission. The VGUIDEcatalog represents data from only about 9 years of the Chandra mission.Future releases of VGUIDE will include newly identified variable guidestars as the mission proceeds. An important advantage of the use ofspace data to identify and analyze variable stars is the relatively longobservations that are available. The Chandra orbit allows forobservations up to 2 days in length. Also, guide stars were often usedmultiple times for Chandra observations, so many of the stars in theVGUIDE catalog have multiple light curves available from various timesin the mission. The catalog is presented as both online data associatedwith this paper and as a public Web interface. Light curves with data atthe instrumental time resolution of about 2 s, overplotted with the databinned at 1 ks, can be viewed on the public Web interface and downloadedfor further analysis. VGUIDE is a unique project using data collectedduring the mission that would otherwise be ignored. The stars availablefor use as Chandra guide stars are generally 6-11 mag and are commonlyspectral types A and later. Due to the selection of guide stars entirelyfor positional convenience, this catalog avoids the possible bias ofsearching for variability in objects where it is to be expected.Statistics of variability compared to spectral type indicate theexpected dominance of A-F stars as pulsators. Eclipsing binaries areconsistently 20%-30% of the detected variables across all spectraltypes.
| Oxygen abundances in nearby stars. Clues to the formation and evolution of the Galactic disk
The abundances of iron and oxygen are homogeneously determined in asample of 523 nearby (d<150 pc) FGK disk and halo stars withmetallicities in the range -1.5<[Fe/H]<0.5. Iron abundances wereobtained from an LTE analysis of a large set of Fe I and Fe II lineswith reliable atomic data. Oxygen abundances were inferred from arestricted non-LTE analysis of the 777 nm O I triplet. We adopted theinfrared flux method temperature scale and surface gravities based onHipparcos trigonometric parallaxes. Within this framework, theionization balance of iron lines is not satisfied: the mean abundancesfrom the Fe I lines are systematically lower by 0.06 dex than those fromthe Fe II lines for dwarf stars of Teff>5500 K and[Fe/H]<0.0, and giant stars of all temperatures and metallicitiescovered by our sample. The discrepancy worsens for cooler and metal-richmain-sequence stars. We use the stellar kinematics to compute theprobabilities of our sample stars to be members of the thin disk, thickdisk, or halo of the Galaxy. We find that the majority of thekinematically-selected thick-disk stars show larger [O/Fe] ratioscompared to thin-disk stars while the rest show thin-disk abundances,which suggests that the latter are thin-disk members with unusual(hotter) kinematics. A close examination of this pattern for disk starswith ambiguous probabilities shows that an intermediate population withproperties between those of the thin and thick disks does not exist, atleast in the solar neighborhood. Excluding the stars with unusualkinematics, we find that thick-disk stars show slowly decreasing [O/Fe]ratios from about 0.5 to 0.4 in the -0.8<[Fe/H]<-0.3 range. Usinga simple model for the chemical evolution of the thick disk we show thatthis trend results directly from the metallicity dependence of the TypeII supernova yields. At [Fe/H]>-0.3, we find no obvious indication ofa sudden decrease (i.e., a "knee") in the [O/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] pattern ofthick-disk stars that would connect the thick and thin disk trends at ahigh metallicity. We conclude that Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) did notcontribute significantly to the chemical enrichment of the thick disk.In the -0.8<[Fe/H]<+0.3 range, thin-disk stars show decreasing[O/Fe] ratios from about 0.4 to 0.0 that require a SN Ia contribution.The implications of these results for studies of the formation andevolution of the Galactic disk are discussed.Tables 4-6 are only available in electronic form at the CDS viaanonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or viahttp://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/qcat?J/A+A/465/271 Partially based onobservations obtained with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, which is a jointproject of the University of Texas at Austin, the Pennsylvania StateUniversity, Stanford University, Ludwig-Maximilians-UniversitätMünchen, and Georg-August-Universität Göttingen; and datafrom the UVES Paranal Observatory Project (ESO DDT Program ID266.D-5655).
| Elemental abundance survey of the Galactic thick disc
We have performed an abundance analysis for F- and G- dwarfs of theGalactic thick-disc component. A sample of 176 nearby (d<= 150pc)thick-disc candidate stars was chosen from the Hipparcos catalogue andsubjected to a high-resolution spectroscopic analysis. Using accurateradial velocities combined with the Hipparcos astrometry, kinematics (U,V and W) and Galactic orbital parameters were computed. We estimate theprobability for a star to belong to the thin disc, the thick disc or thehalo. With a probability P>= 70 per cent taken as certain membership,we assigned 95 stars to the thick disc, 13 to the thin disc, and 20 tothe halo. The remaining 48 stars in the sample cannot be assigned withreasonable certainty to one of the three components.Abundances of C, O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni,Cu, Zn, Y, Ba, Ce, Nd and Eu have been obtained. The abundances for thethick-disc stars are compared with those for the thin-disc members fromReddy et al. The ratios of α-elements (O, Mg, Si, Ca and Ti) toiron for thick-disc stars show a clear enhancement compared to thin-discmembers in the range -0.3 < [Fe/H] < -1.2. There are also otherelements - Al, Sc, V, Co, and possibly Zn - which show enhanced ratiosto iron in the thick disc relative to the thin disc. The abundances ofNa, Cr, Mn, Ni and Cu (relative to Fe) are very similar for thin- andthick-disc stars. The dispersion in abundance ratios [X/Fe] at given[Fe/H] for thick-disc stars is consistent with the expected scatter dueto measurement errors, suggesting a lack of `cosmic' scatter.A few stars classified as members of the thick disc by our kinematiccriteria show thin-disc abundances. These stars, which appear older thanmost thin-disc stars, are also, on average, younger than the thick-discpopulation. They may have originated early in the thin-disc history, andbeen subsequently scattered to hotter orbits by collisions. The thickdisc may not include stars with [Fe/H] > -0.3. The observedcompositions of the thin and thick discs seem to be consistent with themodels of galaxy formation by hierarchical clustering in a Lambda colddark matter (ΛCDM) universe.
| A Catalog of Northern Stars with Annual Proper Motions Larger than 0.15" (LSPM-NORTH Catalog)
The LSPM catalog is a comprehensive list of 61,977 stars north of theJ2000 celestial equator that have proper motions larger than 0.15"yr-1 (local-background-stars frame). The catalog has beengenerated primarily as a result of our systematic search for high propermotion stars in the Digitized Sky Surveys using our SUPERBLINK software.At brighter magnitudes, the catalog incorporates stars and data from theTycho-2 Catalogue and also, to a lesser extent, from the All-SkyCompiled Catalogue of 2.5 million stars. The LSPM catalog considerablyexpands over the old Luyten (Luyten Half-Second [LHS] and New LuytenTwo-Tenths [NLTT]) catalogs, superseding them for northern declinations.Positions are given with an accuracy of <~100 mas at the 2000.0epoch, and absolute proper motions are given with an accuracy of ~8 masyr-1. Corrections to the local-background-stars propermotions have been calculated, and absolute proper motions in theextragalactic frame are given. Whenever available, we also give opticalBT and VT magnitudes (from Tycho-2, ASCC-2.5),photographic BJ, RF, and IN magnitudes(from USNO-B1 catalog), and infrared J, H, and Ks magnitudes(from 2MASS). We also provide an estimated V magnitude and V-J color fornearly all catalog entries, useful for initial classification of thestars. The catalog is estimated to be over 99% complete at high Galacticlatitudes (|b|>15deg) and over 90% complete at lowGalactic latitudes (|b|>15deg), down to a magnitudeV=19.0, and has a limiting magnitude V=21.0. All the northern starslisted in the LHS and NLTT catalogs have been reidentified, and theirpositions, proper motions, and magnitudes reevaluated. The catalog alsolists a large number of completely new objects, which promise to expandvery significantly the census of red dwarfs, subdwarfs, and white dwarfsin the vicinity of the Sun.Based on data mining of the Digitized Sky Surveys (DSSs), developed andoperated by the Catalogs and Surveys Branch of the Space TelescopeScience Institute (STScI), Baltimore.Developed with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), aspart of the NASA/NSF NStars program.
| Photoelectric Vilnius Photometry of Hipparcos Turn-Off Region Stars
Seven-color photometry in the Vilnius system and photometricclassification in terms of spectral type, absolute magnitude andmetallicity are presented for 145 Hipparcos stars of the turn-offregion, most of which have parallaxes determined to an accuracy of atleast 15%. The stars selected for the observing program included thoseidentified kinematically as intermediate between the thin disk and halo,plus a number of weak-lined stars discovered previously from objectiveprism surveys. The metallicity distribution we find for a kinematicallydefined sample of possible members of the thick disk has a meanabundance [Fe/H]= --0.3 dex and a dispersion of 0.3 dex. Our data seemto suggest a large age for this intermediate population.
| La mesure des vitesses radiales au prisme objectif. IX - 3e liste de vitesses radiales déterminées au prisme objectif à vision directe
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Observation and Astrometry data
| Constellation: | Κασσιόπη |
| Right ascension: | 23h26m40.69s |
| Declination: | +58°45'25.2" |
| Apparent magnitude: | 9.081 |
| Proper motion RA: | 132 |
| Proper motion Dec: | -109.6 |
| B-T magnitude: | 9.86 |
| V-T magnitude: | 9.146 |
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